MacFixIt Answers

A new feature from MacFixIt editors answering questions emailed to us by our users. This week the questions cover emailing HTML emails and editing templates, learning how to use the UNIX environment, and details on automatic file defragmentation.

Have a question about your Mac or a technical problem you're trying to solve? Send it in!

Question:

MacFixIt reader "Rombaldi" writes:

"What software can be used to create the e-mail full graphic ads that we all get everyday? Can the templates in Mail be edited?"

Answer:

For the first question, Mail supports sending standard HTML messages, but it does not support editing it. Therefore, you will need to create a page using an application that exports to HTML (or just use an HTML editor), and then send it using Mail via the following procedure:

1. Create your HTML page.
   Using a text editor or other HTML-generating program, create your page.
   
   
2. Test the page.
   Open the page in Safari or another browser by right-clicking it and choosing the browser from the "Open With..." submenu.
   
   
3. Mail contents.
   When the page is ready, open it in Safari and from the "File" menu choose "Mail Contents of this Page", which will open it in Mail. Ensure everything looks as it should, and repeat the process here to make changes. Then when ready, click "Send".

NOTE: It may help to host images on a web server, and keeping the HTML as simple as possible (no JavaScript or embedded iframes, movies, or Flash) will yield better results.

As for editing templates, this can be done, but templates are rather complex and the editing of them is not straightforward. Templates are categorized in the /Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support/Apple/Mail/Stationery/Apple/Contents/Resources/ folder. From within this folder, choose the category for the template, and go to the /Contents/Resources/ folder within that category. Each Mail template will be look like a letter with ".mailstationery" as the file suffix. To edit a stationery file, right-click it and choose "Show Package Contents." Then navigate to the /Contents/Resources/ folder in the new window that opens, and you should see a "content.html" file. This is the HTML file that is the base structure for the stationery and if you know HTML, you can edit this file to change placement of items on the page. The HTML file references various image files within the same folder, which can either be edited or replaced, or you can alter the HTML file to reference differently-named image files.

Question:

MacFixIt reader "Kenneth Brayer" writes:

"I want to use gfortran which is free and installs in usr/---. I need to run the Mac, iMAC 20 inch, OS 10.5.6, 2.66 dual core cpu from spring/summer 2008 in the UNIX environment. I knew UNIX many years ago and I can relearn it. Is there a book I can buy or a website I can find on using UNIX on the IMAC.

Answer:

The UNIX core of Mac OS X has its differences from other distributions of UNIX, however, the basics are the same and there are no machine-specific versions (such as one for iMacs, or for PowerMacs and MacBooks). Navigating and managing files use the same commands and syntax that have been around for years, so any tools and techniques you may remember will be relevant. There are a variety of new and unique commands specifically for OS X that Apple has developed, but those are not necessary for performing most UNIX-oriented terminal tasks.

As for the Terminal, learning it and the details are like learning HTML or how to program in that there are many resources on the Web for it, but many don't offer an approach that will show you how to do things properly. Some do exist, and here are a couple of Terminal introduction Web sites that do a pretty good job at covering the basics and getting you up and running:

One thing to remember is that in the latest versions of OS X, some of the legacy UNIX technologies are being changed. For instance, if you are used to an "init/cron" system for launching and scheduling tasks and processes, in Leopard this has been switched to "launchd", and the management of this is different; however, many Terminal resources will use examples with "cron" and other items that may not be relevant to OS X. The basics for navigation and file manipulation, however, will be the same.

As far as books go, there are a variety out there but one we recommend is "UNIX for Programmers and Users" (either 2nd or 3rd edition -- Amazon Link), by Graham Glass and King Ables. This book starts out with the basics of computer hardware and advances you through learning the Terminal and shells into shell scripting and programming, which is exceptionally useful for exercising your skills in the terminal.

Question:

MacFixIt reader "Luc Prouix" writes:

"You say that, 'In OS X, Apple has optimized drive performance by incorporating technologies that actively defragment files on the drive...'

Is it also doing it on windows partitions (FAT32 or NTFS)?
Thank you"

Answer:

The simple answer is no. In Macintosh computers, it's the combination of the HFS filesystem and OS X that allows for on-the-fly defragmentation of files. When a file 20MB or smaller is split up, as long as OS X is running on an HFS formatted volume that is journaled, it will defragment the file. An additional type of defragmentation OS X uses is a technology called "Hot-File-Adaptive-Clustering", which keeps track of files being frequently accessed and will move them closer together and placed closer to the drive's "metadata zone" on the disk, which is a fast-accessed portion of the drive based on the drive's physical characteristics. As with the defragmentation of smaller files, this requires a journaled HFS volume.

Despite the format restrictions of on-the-fly file defragmentation, all drives can be optimized. This is where you use a third-party program such as "Drive Genius" to reorganize the files on the disk so they are in the optimum position on disk for access according to that file type (such as all binary or executable files placed before data files). This distribution can be different for various drive formats, and some programs will support fragmentation of certain formats and not others.

Resources